Love Like That Never Dies
by turnslightly
Summary: Following the Michaelson family from their first transition into vampires, and introducing a new character. Sometimes your greatest allies are your oldest ones. Contains romance and various ships further on. Attempts to explain why the originals act the way they do.
1. Full Moon

**Love like that never dies.**

The sun had risen only a few hours ago but the Michaelsons all were already about and making their preparations for the long day and night ahead. Once a month they were forced to disappear from the village, gather everything of value to them and head up the mountain to a secret cave. There they would wait out the full moon, until the villagers were men once more and life could continue as normal. This controlled alliance had taken years to construct and they always fulfilled their side of the bargain to the letter.

Niklaus wiped the sweat out of his eyes and continued dragging the empty water butts over the rise behind his parents' house. There were advantages to living a little way outside the werewolf village; they were only bothered by those who sought his father's business or his mother's health potions and charms. However, it did make gathering food and fetching watch more problematic. He passed between the trees, avoiding the densest patches of the forest automatically, and paused to shift the barrels in his arms.

At that moment Rebekah marched unknowingly into Nik's earshot, in an attempt to lose her persistent follower. Trampling down brambles and pushing through low branches in a hurry to get back home, she tried to ignore Kol's teasing.

"Honestly, I would accept the boy, I would, except he is a weakling Bekah, the youngest of his brothers and the most foolish, you must see that!"

Rebekah rolled her eyes and muttered about foolish brothers before calling back to him, "he is no boy, he is man now Kol, and I would appreciate if you left it well alone. It is no concern of yours who I enjoy passing the time of day with."

Kol laughed, "a man? His arms are as wide as my wrist. I doubt he has a single hair on his body!"

The pair trudged on towards the house, their rapid back and forth quarrelling fading quickly out of Nik's hearing. Sighing, he shook his head and hoisted the barrels higher in his arms. Kol was of an age to become very interested in the opposite sex but was still too immature to manage to woo them. Instead he had become a torment to his sister, enjoying how easily he could work up her anger with his teasing about her own possible suitors. Nik knew his brother mainly did it to stay close to a few of Rebekah's female companions, but his constant games were starting to frustrate his sister no end and he would not put up with it much longer. He would have stepped in today had he not been so exhausted. His entire body ached. He would not even have managed to get up this morning if he had not had help from Elijah.

As soon as he thought of his brother, he heard the sound of his voice up ahead. Pausing on the edge of a clearing he took a moment and sat on one of the barrels to watch. His youngest brother, Henrik, barely sixteen years old stood straight, holding a tall wooden bow out before him, as Elijah showed him how to load an arrow and pull it close to his ear. Seeing him watching, his older brother's gaze flicked guiltily over Nik's newest bruises. He ducked his head to hide the bruise by his eye but glanced up quickly as Henrik made a shot. The arrow flew slowly past the tree he had aimed at and into the bushes behind.

"Don't worry, try again," he called.

Henrik turned and saw him sat there. He blushed, embarrassed, "I hit the tree before! I swear!"

"I know you can hit it, don't worry," Nik smiled indulgently. He loved his little brother dearly and had taken many a beating to protect him from their father's anger. All children make mistakes occasionally growing up, but as his other children had aged Michael had only become filled with contempt for the younger ones' issues fitting in with the villagers. Finn had always done well, being of an age to understand the importance of trade even as they had arrived in their new land, chased out by the disease back home across the sea. Nik had been too young to remember his much older siblings, the one whose lives the plagues had claimed. He could only attribute his brothers' and parents' closed off affections to this memory of loss.

His mother had thrown herself into witchcraft, becoming more powerful than any witch back in the old lands. Finn had always acted with distain towards him and even Elijah, a friend whom he could always confide in, had always maintained an air of aloof detachment from the rest of his family. It was for this reason that Nik had always seen it as his responsibility to help his younger siblings and stick up for them.

Henrik dropped his bow and came striding forward to peer intently down at his brother's face, "father did this last night?"

Nik grimaced, "Henrik, please don't bring this up again."

"But this is because of Kol is it not? Kol stole food from him and you take the blame. Why not just tell him the truth? I cannot remember the last time I saw you without a black eye, or taking a beating for some mishap of ours."

Niklaus rose and stretched out his sore muscles, "and you would rather see Kol with a bloody face? Or Bekah?"

Henrik scowled. He disliked his father, who was far stricter and more temperamental than any of the men in the village, yet they were the ones he was told to fear due to their innate power and hereditary passions of anger.

He thought for a moment then lifted one of the water butts onto his shoulder, "I can at least fetch the water for you."

"If father saw you I would only get another flogging, you know."

Henrik paused, "then you will carry them back from here."

Turning, he walked off quickly towards the spring. Nik sighed, too tired to argue, and sat on the remaining barrel, gazing fondly after his brother. Elijah returned from collecting the lost arrow and strolled purposefully towards him. Nik always knew when his brother had something on his mind because his expression became very intense. It was not a trait that he teased him about any longer; he cared too deeply about his friendship these days to rile him up unnecessarily.

"Niklaus," he began. "I was wondering if I could speak to you about Tatia…"

Nik scowled and rubbed a bruise on his arm impatiently. Tatia was a bit of a sore spot between them that he wished would go away. She had actually met Nik first and had toyed with his affections for a while, playing on his loneliness, until he had introduced her to his older brother. Now Elijah rarely spent an afternoon apart from her and although the two had resolved to leave the matter alone, here he was bringing her up.

"It is not about her so much," Elijah continued, "As something that she mentioned to me. As you know I have trusted her with the knowledge of the cave…"

Nik nodded edgily; if it had been up to him no one with a connection to the werewolves would know of their hiding place- it was not safe for them to know. At least Tatia had never shown any signs of becoming a wolf herself, but if she ever did they would have to find somewhere new to secret themselves away once a month. And he would take the blame as ever. He also had little doubt as to the purpose for Elijah taking her there, and it disturbed him to think of his brother in such a way.

"What is your point, Elijah?" he snapped.

"She said that she had made some explorations of the back of the place, where the tunnels go deeper into the mountainside."

"Really?" Nik looked up, this peaked his interest. He had wanted to look into the tunnels himself but had never had the opportunity.

"Apparently there are markings on the walls. She could not make any sense of them but I thought you might be able to."

They heard the sound of Henrik approaching, staggering under the weight of a full barrel.

Nik rose and turned quickly to Elijah, "we will go and have a look tonight, after Michael and Esther have gone to sleep." Elijah nodded thoughtfully as Nik went to take the water from Henrik and place it down, "thank-you brother. Now get on with your practise. I will get the other myself."

Henrik protested a little but truly he hadn't the strength yet for this work. Leaving the full water butt with his brothers, Nik dragged the other down to the spring himself pondering Elijah's words. He had made a study of the picture writing of this village and the three closest, as well as the older symbols they would occasionally come across marked on a stone or ancient tree. It was unlikely that he would not recognise what these meant and was intrigued as to what they would say.

When he finally returned to the house, covered in sweat, with the barrels of water, his mother gave him no mind, not even glancing up from her darning. Finn was bundling sheep wool into material to take to the cave as makeshift beds and paused to examine his brother before continuing without comment. He was about to leave when his mother spoke up.

"Niklaus, dear, will you ask Kol and Rebekah to come help take these things to the cave?"

"Of course, mother," he replied.

"How is Henrik's training coming along? You must have passed them on the trail."

"I did. He seems to be getting a handle on it, slowly."

"Well no one can be as slow as you, boy, you did not know the right end of an arrow for years," a deep voice barked from the doorway.

Nik glowered at the floor as Michael entered, a dead deer over his shoulder. The truth was he had taken no longer than any of his other siblings to learn to hunt, but his other passions- drawing and learning- had made him a weakling in Michael's eyes.

Leaving the house as quickly as possible, Nik found his siblings and together they climbed up the pass to the cave. It was always strangely chilled in there, protected as it was from the heat of the day. In other circumstances he knew Rebekah would have deemed it too eerie to stay long inside, but tonight was the full moon, and they had to be prepared. Laying down their possessions, they went into the forest outside and cut a few long branches, thick with the leaves of spring, and refreshed the ones that already hung over the entrance to the cave, shielding it from preying eyes. The entrance was little more than a slit in the side of the rock face but when they were all safe inside Michael, Finn and Elijah would work to fill the gap with stone as well.

Being inside the cave had sobered even Kol up and they were silent as they waited for the rest of their family to join them. The sun was setting by the time they had all assembled and began disguising their hideout with haste. They had scarcely finished when a howl rose from the valley below. Within an hour the sound was all around the mountainside, bouncing off the rocks and riding through the trees on the wind. Inside the freezing cave, their blood turned cold.


	2. The Cave

Above the mountain the moon was nearing its zenith in the sky. Below, the wolves paid homage to it. The villagers unlucky enough to have awoken the curse had screamed through the agony into their animal forms hours ago and now prowled the land in their pack howling to the sky.

Beneath the mountain, in their cave, the Michaelsons tried to sleep through the noise and fear. Henrik had curled up close to his mother, the small pile of arrows he had been whittling lay discarded beside him. Esther, having poured over her grimoires with Rebekah late into the night, slept soundly, and Michael and Finn snored beside her. Eventually even Kol's weary eyes had shut, fatigue overpowering fear of the night outside.

Nik's eyes flicked open at the sound of Kol's heavy breathing and he sat up gingerly. Across the dim cave Elijah nodded at Rebekah, who still rolled, restless, on her mat. Stealthy as the wolves they hid from, Nik crept to the back of the cave, Elijah behind him. Taking one of the smouldering torches each, they slipped between the rough walls of the cave, treading deeper into the heart of the mountainside.

"Apparently the path splits," Elijah whispered after they had gone a little way. The torch flickered between them, throwing crazed shadows across the sloping walls. "One is a dead end and the other leads down some way to a secondary cave where the pictures are."

"Tatia did not happen to mention which path was which, did she?" Nik sighed as they reached the fork.

Elijah's silence infuriated him. Huffing in annoyance, he took the left path, leaving Elijah to take the other in the dark, and followed it some twenty winding paces before finding the way too narrow to continue further. Pushing his glowing torch before him, he squinted ahead to see if Tatia would have been able to advance further.

In the black of the cave ahead, dark eyes opened. The still air hung about her face as she took in her surroundings. The cave… the cave in the mountains where they would hide… and she remembered. Her sister. Grief tore up her throat and stung her eyes. No… no, this was just a memory of the grief that was. She lay silent on the rocky ground, barely breathing, weak beyond belief, and no tears fell. Time had passed, she felt it. Even as she had slipped out of conscious thought in the darkness of the cave, the years had tiptoed past.

Her throat was parched… and suddenly, with the sound of a shuffling at the entrance, she realised what had woken her. A werewolf.

Niklaus glanced back to see if Elijah was returning yet. Clearly his path had been much longer. He listened for a minute for movement back in the cave, but heard nothing. Turning once more to the dead end ahead, he realised that there was a way through. Tatia would not have taken it though; it required crawling under a large curve of rock, pushing the torch ahead. Stretching on the other side, Nik attempted to brush the dirt off his clothes- unkempt garments were punishable, he knew from experience. He held the torch up to examine the way ahead once more and found, upon rounding a corner, that the light was reflecting, not off the rock a few feet away from him, but from the back of a small cave. And he was not alone.

A young man. She smelled him before his torch came into view, the light burning her eyes. His clothes smelt of grass and memories of the outside world, his skin remembered a recent sweat, exercise or fear, and his heart beat strong with blood.  
Holding a hand out before her to shield her eyes from the light, she rose slowly from the ground, stretching her sore muscles. She had startled him- that much was apparent. He stood frozen, open mouthed, and in that instant she recognised that the werewolf part of him lay dormant. Without thinking she stepped forward into the light to compel him.  
"Do not be afraid."

Nik stared at the beautiful girl before him and knew that he was safe. He instinctively raised a hand to brush the hair from her face so he could see her eyes more clearly. Immediately, she flinched away and he dropped the hand.

"Who are you?" he asked, examining her in the light of the torch.

Her clothes were clearly well made, but old, dirty and creased, and her dark hair hung lifeless and dull around her face.

She stepped forward again to speak, blocking the light from her eyes, "the full moon shines."

"Yes," the man replied, without understanding.

She sighed; he did not know of the presence of the curse, had not awoken it. Yet she sensed it within him, the potential to turn. The only person to find her in this mountain, to awaken her in years, could easily become an enemy. It was a shame, for she realised that he was very handsome. He was tall, with a strong, muscular chest and striking features. Even in the dim torchlight she could see he had perfect sparkling blue eyes.

A whisper came from the cave entrance and in a flash she was gone, straight to the back of the cave. But a sniff of the air told her this was just a man, and the first one stood in shock, his eyes glued to hers.

Nik wanted to run, wanted to dart back up the tunnel to where he knew his brother was waiting for him, but what if it followed, this beautiful creature, to where his family lay sleeping. No human moved like she did.

He changed his question slightly, "what are you?"

She gazed at him from across the small space, eyes wide, and he could not move if he had wished to. Her voice had a strange lilt that reminded him of the old country, drowning him in nostalgia.

"I am one of the vampyr," she said.

"I do not understand. What is your name? Why are you alone in this cave?" Nik paused for a minute, almost dreading the answer to his next question. "How long have you been here?"

The whisper came down the passage again; Elijah was worried.

The beautiful girl smiled at him sadly and spoke, "call to him."

"My family must not hear us."

"Then go to him."

He paused to think; Michael must not know she was here, but Elijah… Elijah could be trusted. He turned back to her, "Stay here, I shall fetch my brother… I want to help you."

She sighed deeply and her memories swirled in her mind, unfocussed but melancholy. What purpose was there for her now that her sister was dead? She saw that the young man was still searching her face. He would help her…

"Why?"

Nik had no answer, he simply knew that she was important, that he should protect her.


End file.
